News

Draw Your Knives

—John A. Tirpak9/27/2013

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The submittal of the Air Force's Fiscal 2015 program objective memorandum to the
Office of the Secretary of Defense means "the game has begun," in
hashing out the grand Fiscal 2015 defense budget, said Richard Lombardi, the
Air Force's deputy assistant secretary for acquisition integration, on Thursday in an AFA-sponsored speech. Now the pushing and pulling on the various service submissions will continue
until final choices are made, probably in December. Lombardi said it's a zero-sum
game: anyone proposing a new program had better come up with an old one to get
rid of as an offset. As much as possible, these offsets will have to be found
within the portfolio of each of the Air Force's core function lead integrators,
but for truly critical programs, offsets may have to be found from other CFLIs,
said Lombardi. As part of the Pentagon's Better Buying Power 2.0 initiative,
programs will also be subject to cost caps, and there will have to be revaluations
about whether they're really needed if they approach or bust those caps. The
development of this POM was exemplary, said Lombardi, with "more
engagement" from four-star generals than he's ever seen. Wherever
possible, the Air Force made "strategic trades," he said during the Sept. 26 event in Arlington, Va.